"If my father had told me to drink arsenic, I would've done it," she said. "He meant that much to me. I would have done it in a heartbeat."631Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcpxSOKIujd
Marissa Cooper had been talking about her stepfather, how much he'd come to mean to her and her mother after having rescued them from their nomadic wanderings through the Western states, where here mother moved from job to job and Marissa had tried to adapt to an endless series of makeshift homes in cheap boardinghouses and third-rate apartments. Dilworth noted the slip of the tongue as she substituted "father" for "stepfather." For some reason this made him uneasy, and the foreboding he had experienced during her last session returned.
"We became very close. I was in the third grade. I had missed a year while Mother and I were moving around, so at ten I was a year older than all the others."
As lean and elegant as a Paris model, Marissa was fond of fashionable clothes. Her streamlined body turned everything she put on into haute couture, creating a sleek elegance that caused head-turning responses whenever she entered a room. She was indeed exceptional, and Dilworth could easily believe that what she possessed beneath her clothes was equally inspiring. He had spent a lot of time imagining the precise nature of that inspiration. The precise nature of it. But aside from this illicit, if imagined, appraisal of her anatomy, there was his more straightforward appreciation of her fashion sense. He just liked what she wore, and he had never seen her wear even the smallest accessory that did not seem appropriate.
This afternoon her thick golden hair was pulled back and tied in the back with a white lace scarf. She wore a surplice wrap dress of rayon challis in a black and white stippling pattern of misty delicacy with a white, lace-trimmed collar that dipped into her bustline. Her stockings were the sheerest white, her shoes, lying at the foot of the chaise, were bone. She lay with one arm at her side and the other draped across her thin waist.
"He became my best friend," she went on; her right hand touched the skirt of her dress. "We swam together in our pool, played games; you know, who could swim the farthest underwater, who could pick up the most pennies from the deep end of the pool before having to come up, who could turn the most somersaults underwater. Mother would read by the pool or dozed in the cabana. He and I watched a lot of TV together, eating popcorn or pizza while we sprawled on the floor or lounged on the sofa. He would get me to snuggle up next to him or lie down with my head in his lap. Lots of times I would go to sleep there. Mother would sit in her own big chair and pain her nails or read magazines, or sometimes she just wasn't there, period. And we cooked together, too. He liked to cook, and he taught me how to help him in the kitchen. I learned everything I know about cooking from him, not from Mother. I don't particularly remember her in the kitchen at all. It didn't interest her."
The hand that was draped over Marissa's waist flattened out and Dilworth saw her pressing slightly on her upper abdomen as though she'd experienced a slight pain or was trying to ease a tightness. He looked at her face, at the soulful russet shadowing around her almond eyes, at the subtly symmetrical mouth with its hint of a pucker at one side. But there was a slight tension between her eyebrows, the faint start of a frown.
"He was my dad," she said again. Again Dilworth made a note, though in this instance it was unclear how she had used the word. She could have meant: "He was my 'dad,' " or she could have meant: "He was like a dad to me" or "He became my dad."
"He loved me," she said. "He told me so and that made me feel wonderful. I really wanted to be loved and to have that love demonstrated to me. He did everything with me, and we developed a very special emotional bond. It happened very fast for me because I had this empty space there, and he walked in and filled it. I became his 'special girl.' At the same time, now that my 'emotional needs' were taken care of. Mother seemed to relinquish entirely any attachment to me at all. But she didn't seem to be particularly interested in him, either. My symbiotic relationship with my dad seemed to free her to----just pay more attention to herself, to indulge her narcissism. She grew increasingly distant, more wrapped up in herself, preening like a solitary white bird. She was very beautiful. And also uncommonly---self centered."
Marissa paused and her hand at her side began picking at her dress. It wasn't doing anything, not smoothing the dress or rearranging the way it lay, just plucking at it between her thumb and forefinger. The fingers on her stomach moved slightly, but restlessly.
"I wanted my father to know that I loved him, too. I didn't want him ever to leave me or to drift away from me as my mother had done. I remember being very, very worried that he'd do that.
"One afternoon I went shopping with a friend from school and her mother. I bought my first bikini bathing suit. It was aquamarine, and when I bought it in the store, I remember imagining how wonderful it would look in the blue water of our pool. I couldn't wait to get in the pool to see if I would match the water. I imagined that I would be very beautiful swimming in the pool as if I were actually one with the color of the water. I loved the colors, just the pleasure of the colors.
"In the summer we'd do our swimming at night, and I especially liked that because the lights under the water seemed very exotic to me. I wore my new bikini that night to play water basketball with my dad. We were horsing around, and I remember I finally got my hands on the ball and was getting away from him. He chased me, laughing, and grabbed me from behind----and he held me----somehow differently. I don't really remember how I sensed it at first. I'd never felt it before, never even give it a thought, but I instantly knew what it was and that it had gotten hard, and he was holding it against the back of my suit bottom, sort of cupping me in his lap. Then he started grinding it against me, holding me so tight that I couldn't get away. I felt him working that long bulge between my ass, and suddenly his hands slipped under the top of my bikini, and he began fondling my nipples, massaging them, squeezing them between his fingers."
Marissa stopped and swallowed, her eyes fixed on a distant memory. "I was so startled----I didn't really do anything, just thought, What's this? What's he doing to me? and then suddenly he kind of shivered and held me tight for another two seconds. My mind was a mess of confusion. This was totally alien to me; I didn't understand it at all and I didn't like it. I think I started trying to get away, and then he kind of laughed again and shoved me away, pretending to be playing again, and swam toward the side of the pool."
Marissa's nervous fingers betrayed her agitation and caused Dilworth to look at her face. The little pucker between her eyebrows had become a stern frown, but it was more the frown of on straining to hear some faint sound rather than that of a person emotionally upset. Dilworth watched her. He had heard a good number of these stories over the years, and wondered how she had handled it as a child, and how she would interpret it as a woman. He said nothing, but he was irritated at the recognition of his own arousal. But he tried not to be self-condemning. After all, it was a biologically normal reaction. The fact that she was speaking as a child didn't bother him (or did it?) and that was the cause of his own discomfort.
But there was more at play here than a violation of cultural conventions. The same inexplicable attraction he had felt for Dana five years ago was echoed in the resonance of the emotions that stirred in him at hearing Marissa Cooper's story. Not only did he recognize these familiar stirrings, but he discerned, too, an intrusive anxiety. The same feeling of being on the foggy remains of a moral frontier that had emerged as he interviewed Dana in those early months after they first met were surfacing once again as he listened to the tortured memories of Marissa's childhood, those early moments the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch had characterized as "the troubled colors of bygone days...."
Marissa did not continue right away. In fact, she didn't speak again for seventeen minutes, according to Diilworth's mantle clock. As usual, he stayed silent, watching, noticing that Marissa's legs moved a little also, almost as nervously as her fingers, but ever so slightly, like someone who had lain in one position for too long. But as he watched, she gained control of herself. By a remarkable force of will she calmed every part of her twitching body, settling herself, gaining control so that she could continue.
"As soon as I broke away," she said, "I turned and looked at Mom, who was sitting at the other end of the pool with her legs in the water reading a magazine. She hadn't seen anything. I looked at my dad, and he kind of frowned and shook his head for me not to say anything. I guess he could tell what I had in mind. It was disorienting----what he'd done. And now this, his not wanting me to say anything about it . It was---disorienting--what he'd done. And now this, his not wanting me to say anything about it. It was---disorienting." Marissa couldn't seem to find another word to better describe her feelings. "He wanted to hide it from her, what he'd done. Even in my child's mind I saw the enormity of what he was suggesting, that it was a kind of point of no return. If I went along with him on this, that put me in the position of co-conspirator with him. If I agreed, we shared a secret.
"I was still in the water, looking at Mom, her legs moving slowly back and forth in the blue water, her head down looking at the magazine. Behind me I heard my dad start calling my name, kind of laughing, maybe a little nervously. Right there in that moment between them I tried to figure it out for myself. Why did I feel so odd about what he'd done? What had he done? I don't know. What's so different about my chest that he shouldn't touch me there, or about his thing that he shouldn't do what he did? What had he done? He kissed me on the lips and patted me on the bottom. What made this so different? I mean, how do dads act? He had been so wonderful to me. I knew he'd never harm me. I knew he loved me. And I also knew if I said anything about it, it would be awkward for all of us. It'd ruin things."
In just a few short moments Marissa Cooper had worked herself into another state of agitation, but now she couldn't remain lying down. She sat up abruptly and hung her legs over the side of the chaise. She wiped at her face.
"Could I please have a cold washcloth?" she asked.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Of course." He laid down his notebook and went into his bath and ran a washcloth under the cold water, wrung it out, and brought it back to her. Her face was red, and she seemed like she had been breathing heavily. She took the washcloth and thanked him and put it on her face, unheeding of her makeup. She held it there a moment, hiding her face, and then lifted it. He stood in front of her watching her, realizing that her agitation excited him. She ignored his closeness and wiped the cloth down into the front of her dress, across her breasts, in between them. Dilworth regarded her with an undisguised admiration.
Suddenly she stopped and looked up at him. She glanced down to his crotch, but his sport coat was obscuring the bulge. It didn't matter. She knew. They both understood.
She thrust the cloth out to him without thanking him. He smiled at her and took it back to the bathroom and left it draped over the sink and returned.
Marissa Cooper had gotten her purse and sat it on her lap while she freshened her makeup. Dilworth returned to his armchair and watched her. After a moment he said, "Do you believe that episode just happened out of the blue?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" She was looking at herself in her compact.
"Have you ever wondered if you may have, in some way, provoked this kind of action by your stepfather?"
Her eyes shot up from her hand-held mirror, her expression defiant. He felt as if she had slapped him.
"Sometimes children, little girls, can be provocative without even realizing it," Dilworth persisted. "Maybe you wanted this episode to happen. Why do you think you brought the bikini? Certainly you'll have to admit this kind of swimsuit is much more revealing, much more....."631Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTGZWNfipJN
Cooper lowered her mirror, snapped it shut, and put it into her purse. She looked at him. "I was a child!" she wailed.631Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHymHF8Qe5L
Dilworth smiled. "True. But do you believe children are totally innocent----of such things? Sometimes even as adult we don't know why we do some of the things we do. We're compelled by some unconscious impulse perhaps never really understanding what we've done until it's over, and we can look back and see that there was more in it than met the eye. Have you ever wondered if, maybe unconsciously, you wanted this isolated incident to happen?"631Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKOslIUrD1F
Marissa Cooper stood up from the chaise and looked at Dilworth, her pale feet visible in her peripheral vision as they peeped out from under the hem of her dress like two shy creatures whose slight visibility only hinted at the hidden charm that remained hidden up under the longer folds of the skirt.631Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy6YA5iGlxb
"It was not," she said, "an isolated incident!"631Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsxSBAClbpy
